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Sunday, December 29, 2013

Nashville’s Not An Option…For Now, Anyway

I’m not interested in being famous. I don’t have the right personality to enjoy
the life of a celebrity. That’s one
reason I’ve never been interested in performing live. Don’t get me wrong – applause and compliments
are addictive, and I’ve experienced that, and loved it of course. I have an addictive personality, so I
instinctively know to stay away from something like that, just as with alcohol
or gambling.

I would, however, like it if someone famous recorded and
released one of my songs, and the song became famous, and the artist even more
famous. I do want to have more people
appreciate my songs, and I’m not sure what that says about me, but someone who
is a vehicle for that – someone better at the delivery aspect – is who I need
to find. I’ve heard you need to go to
Nashville for that to happen, or possibly NY or LA.

It’s the end of 2013, and when I look at the lists of the
most popular songs of the last year, I realize I barely know any of the
artists’ names. I don’t recognize any of
the songs either. When I listen to these
songs, I find myself not liking many of them.
Then I try to listen to more by that artist, and again, not finding much
I like.

There’s either terrible hip hop, or terrible mainstream
country, and there doesn’t seem to be any rock and roll anymore. If there is, it has a lot of synthesized
drums and keyboards. It’s a weird time
for a songwriter like me to be pitching songs due to the weirdness of what’s
popular now.

They say if you’re going to be a non-performing songwriter,
it’s all about who you know, and you have to go to Nashville and network and
make connections. A guy from Michigan
with a day job can’t pre-arrange meetings for a vacation down there very
easily. I’m thinking it would be a waste
of time anyway, since I don’t write the type of stuff I hear on the radio, nor
do I want to.

So, that leaves me with the prospect of selling my own
recordings of my own songs, and I’ve got to do it online, since there are no
record stores anymore. In doing so,
would anyone looking for a song for a movie or a famous singer’s next album
ever run across one of my songs for consideration? No, probably not, and so I would still need
to pitch if I wanted that to happen I suppose.

Questioning why I continue to pursue this hobby makes me
think of next steps, getting to another level, etc. which is a natural
thing. In doing so, I question whether
I’m good enough to do so. The reason I
don’t give it up and replace it with something else in that free time slot is
that I really enjoy it.

I get a kick out of listening back to my recordings years
later, and am a little amazed that without any lessons or training of any kind,
I have five or six songs that are real songs, and pretty darned good. Comparing yourself to others is something that
isn’t healthy. It’s good for me, and
what’s good for me, may not be good for a famous artist, but I have a few songs
that might be close.

If presented to those seeking material for an artist to
record, they might agree. There is
something to be said for garage rock being played acoustically, and that’s my
sound. It’s quite different than someone
trained at Berkley or Julliard who would be writing for a play or a movie or a
ballad for a pop star. It’s rock and
roll, which has always been about rebellion, and not too serious, and about having
fun and not getting too fancy. Taking
that thought a step further into punk, you’ve got the anti-establishment,
ant-mainstream.

They say you have to study what’s commercially successful in
the mainstream in order to sell a song to a recording artist. I don’t do that. I don’t care.
I don’t listen to the radio or watch MTV. I don’t care what’s in the top 40. In fact, I’m primarily influenced by what was
on the radio when I was a kid in the 70s.
So, I write what I write, the way I like to do it, and never have an
artist in mind, or a style based on what’s currently popular.

Sure, I could quit my day job, find something similar in
Nashville, and after I move there, see if anyone is interested in any of my
songs. I could hang out at the right
places in the evenings, get involved in the community, meet people. Would that help me get a cut? Probably not, if I don’t pay attention to
what the great singers are looking for.
I have my own weird style – a blend of different genres.

I could go to a studio and bend them into what a popular
artist would sound like, and maybe that would work. I could possibly do that from Michigan – just
pay a demo service down there to do a fully countrified version of some of my songs,
and then figure out who to pitch them to and how to go about that.

Sounds like a lot of effort, doesn’t it? I’m sure there are countless others like me
whose passion for songwriting led them to do just that – pack up and move to
music city. I’m sure they find places to
get the applause, the compliments after the show, the local open mic or song
pull or songwriter in the round deals, or those house concert things. Maybe they’ve made connections, have spent
hard-earned cash on pro demos, pitched them, maybe got a hold or two.

Then you have to wonder – are they happier? Are they discouraged? Was the place all it was cracked up to
be? Has rejection and criticism gotten
them down to the point they wish they hadn’t done it? I wonder what that’s all like. I wonder what about those who achieve the cut
by a major label artist. What is the
pressure like after that? What about
those who’ve never been able to duplicate that, and many years have gone
by? Are they better off? Would I trade being in that position for
being close to family and friends here in my home state?

All I have are unanswered questions here. We’ve all heard it said that it’s better to
have tried and failed than to not have tried at all. If I believe that, those people are better
off than me. Maybe they can write books
about their experiences now, be instructors at song camps, instead of writing “what
if” blog posts like me.

Personally, I’ve gone for it before with certain pursuits in
my life I had contemplated, sometimes against my gut feeling, and they didn’t
work out, and I didn’t gain anything from the experience. I call those regrets. So far, my gut tells me I’m not good enough…..yet. Would I get better any faster if I were to
dive into that world? Probably, but then
again, I might give up faster, and not have enjoyed all these years of my
hobby. Nashville is out for now. Thanks to this blog no one reads, I’ve typed
my way through to that conclusion.